UC San Diego

This dissertation contributes to scholarship at the intersection of medieval spirituality and gender, moving towards a less teleological model of the history medieval spirituality and gender. Using a single core text, Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum (c. 1229), this study examines how gendered meanings manifest in four interrelated ways: the masculine, the feminine, the supernatural, and the transcendent. The analysis first traces traditional gendered lines, but the latter part of this discussion interrogates those binaries, testing how those dichotomies hold up under scrutiny.In terms of masculinity, this dissertation argues that within the dichotomy between crusader and monk, Caesarius intentionally intertwines two masculinities using the concept of ‘the elect.’ By conflating them under the auspices of spiritual prowess, he frames them as conceptually similar. For femininity, despite of Caesarius’s assertions of equity between women and men, his narratives often portray women as more negative light, amplifying feminine stereotypes—sometimes to the point of caricature. This tendency to present gendered portrayals extends into the realm of the imaginary, in that the supernatural in these narratives (e.g., appearances of the Virgin Mary and the Devil) also function as a logical extension of his own experiences in the world. The last chapter takes a different turn to focus on Caesarius’s conception of ‘simplicitas.’ In line with newer historiographical trends in queer and disability studies, this chapter asserts that although Caesarius himself is bound to worldly conceptions of gender it in as a Cistercian monk in the world, he is able to imagine–and in fact at times presents–a view in which gender ceases to be relevant in situations where individuals embody this quality of ‘simplicitas.’ This indicates that within the realm of moral possibility is an internality that transcends the worldly confines of gender. Together, these four gendered lenses enrich an already substantial literature on the topics of exempla, High Medieval spirituality, lay and religious morality, and gender roles. This brings to light a more nuanced understanding of how Caesarius, in his Cistercian context, both reinforced, but also allowed for the circumvention of worldly gender norms and moral values.